Page:Gaston Leroux--The bride of the sun.djvu/226

212 The Guardians of the Temple exchanged glances and moved away again, gently swaying.

Maria-Teresa burst into tears, the ring of madness in her high sobs, while the little boy clung desperately, striving to console her. "Do not cry, Maria-Teresa! They will come to save us. Papa and Dick will come.… Oh! What was that?"

From behind the walls come the strains of music. A curtain is raised, and the players enter—tall, sad-faced men who take their places in a ring around them. They are the sacred players of the quenia, the flute which is made of human bones. Their song is sadder than a De Profundis, and Maria-Teresa shivers, her beseeching eye exploring in vain every corner of the great bare room which is the antechamber of her tomb.

Monstrous, Cyclopean masses of stone, hexagonal in shape and placed one upon the other without mortar, held in place by their mighty weight alone, from the walls of the House of the Serpent She knows where she is, for the mammaconas have told her. There are two Houses of the Serpent, one at Cajamarca, the other at Cuzco. They are called thus because of the stone serpent carved over the main entrances. The serpent is there to guard the sacred precincts, and never allows the victims of the Sun